Few days back, we reported ‘Accessibility Clickjacking’ malware affecting around 500 million Android devices. Now, Trend Micro has surprised us with its new finding. Trend Micro reported that smartphones powered by Qualcomm Snapdragon processors could be exploited by any malicious app to gain root access. If we trust on Qualcomm’s claim, more than 1 billion devices use Snapdragon Soc putting all these devices at risk.
Gaining root access is a serious issue as it gives malicious app admin level capabilities. An attacker can access your data including photos, videos, messages, emails and other. Although Google has now fixed the vulnerability, we cannot say how many devices will receive the security updates. I am saying this because the update will go through the long chain.
Qualcomm → Google → Your device’s manufacturer → Your network carrier → Your handheld over the air
Third phase “Your device’s manufacturer” is the phase where most of the updates stuck. It is the responsibility of your device’s manufacturer to take this issue seriously.
Snapdragon also powered Internet of Things devices. It makes this risk larger. Unfortunately, IoT devices are no longer in line for security updates. This makes it possible for hackers to hack IoT devices. So almost all IoT devices powered by Snapdragon are at risk.
“We believe that any Snapdragon-powered Android device with a 3.10-version kernel is potentially at risk of this attack,” Wish Wu, researcher Trend Micro, said.
If your device does not receive the update and manufacturer takes longer time in pushing the update, you are at a big risk. Nexus users are most lucky people because they receive updates direct from Google.
As of now, researchers have not given the full details of the vulnerability. They only confirmed that it was possible due to two exploits. In first, there was a logic but when an object within the kernel is freed. This bug causes Information leakage. In the second, vulnerability lies in function get_krait_evtinfo. (Krait refers to the processor core used by several Snapdragon processors). With the help of crafted input data, an attacker can generate malicious index leading to a buffer overflow.
The researchers will disclose the full details at the upcoming Hack In The Box security conference in the Netherlands.
Source: Trend Micro
